MORGAN HILL (KCBS) – Although Sierra LaMar missed her school bus in the morning and was marked absent by all her teachers the day she disappeared, an automated e-mail from the school notifying her mother did not go out until 6 o’clock that night.

Like most schools in the Bay Area, Sobrato High School has not adopted technology that would allow for more prompt notifications that, in this case, would have alerted authorities 11 hours earlier that Sierra was missing.

“The moment that you take roll and find a student isn’t where he or she is supposed to be, a text message, a phone call or some other notification could go out. And in theory at least, it could make a difference,” said KCBS technology analyst Larry Magid, who sits on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Only Berkeley School District has adopted that system, according to a Mercury News survey of nine by Bay Area school districts, and district officials there said the system is geared towards curbing truancy. Other districts indicated end-of-day notifications were timed so parents wouldn’t miss them by, for example, having an answering machine message deleted by the truant child.

The Morgan Hill Unified School District does have an online system that allows parents to log in during the day that shows whether a child has missed a class.